Customer Reviews

Gre: Practicing to Take the Computer Science Test (3rd ed)

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2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This books gives you general idea of test and let's you know what are the things you might not be prepared for. I don't have much else to say about this.

Well, I searched for CS GRE books everywhere, couldn't find any; but finally found few books which might be of help if you are giving CS GRE.

You mainly need books for

Introductory programming (Pascal and C)
Logic Design
Data Structures
Theory of Computation
Computer Architecture
Mathematics

some operating system and compiler

So get 5 solid books for these and you will be all set. And here are good books I found for preparing these topics. Finally :-( ( I have only a week left to prepare when I found these books)

Schaum's outline in digital logic
Schaum's outline essential computer mathematics

these two (above) are excellent

and
schaum's outline Data Structures in C++
schaum's outline Operating Systems
schaum's outline theory and problems

are good

All of these books have required theory in them, followed by problems and solutions. Very well explained, easy to follow and just the right amount of info needed for CS GRE.

Hope this helps. Good Luck ~ sameer

My intention with this review is actually not to evaluate this book, but insteado to suggest to other graduate applicants some very interesting sources of information for the GRE/Computer Science test.

The first book I would like to recommend is Fundamentals of Data Structures, by Ellis Horowitz and Sartaj Sahni. It helped me to review subjects like binary trees, hashing, sorting, searching, and graphs.

The second recommendation is Compilers: Principles, Techniques and Tools, by Aho, A., R. Sethi, and D. Ullman. There are many questions related to context-free grammars in the exam, and this book helped me to solve many of sample questions in the GRE:Practicing to Take the Computer Science Test book.

There are some questions related to digital logic and binary arithmetics. One book very well written that could help on practicing binary operations is An Introduction to Computer Logic, by H. T. Nagle.

In addition, the test generally features some questions with a small algorithm or piece of program, written in C, Pascal or structured english. A very good book, which has helped me not only to practice for this questions, is The C Programming Language, by B. Kernighan and D. Ritchie.

Moreover, there are some questions related to computer architecture. A good source in this field is Computer Organization and Architecture, by W. Stallings.

Finally, a good book that covers almost all the subjects is Computer Science, an Overview, by J. Gleen Brookshear. It is a nice material for a final review, and also comes with questions/answers of binary arithmetics.

I hope this essay be helpful for you as a guide to find material to complement the practicing tests.

Textbooks and notes from past classes would be far more helpful than this book. The only valuable pieces of information are the section describing the content of the test and the practice test. Both of these are available in the free booklet you can download at the GRE site. (The practice test is exactly the same.)

The answers aren't explained, and the book is not in and of itself a useful study guide.

However, it is certainly useful in two ways:
Firstly, it allows you to build an initial road map. The sample questions at the front of the book allow you to see where you are weakest, which under the 80-20 rule should then be the first place(s) you study.
Secondly, the full-length practice test allows you to, well, practise the test. With any luck this will help you relax, see that it is indeed possible that you might get the score you want, etc.

The world definitely needs a good CS GRE study guide, and clearly this book is not it. However, until I have written said study guide and made my millions from all the sales I would obviously make, this looks like the best thing going.

This book contains some sample questions on each topic of the GRE Computer Science Subject Test. After practicing these questions, one can try out the Full-length test which looks and feels exactly like the actual test.

This book will be useful as a last minute review for the test. One can try to do the sample test and measure oneself before the actual test. However, the details of the test and steps to prepare, etc are exactly the same as those on the Bulletin, which is availible for free download at gre.org or availible when you apply for the test.

A more detailed specification of the syllabus and some more sample question will be worthy additions.

As the GRE/CS approaches, I must point out that this book is the only available material of any use, except for copies of the first two editions, now out of print. It is true that no solutions are provided; it is equally true that the questions one encounters on the actual exam may appear to share little content with the questions in this book, but they are indeed like these questions. Solving these will help you on the exam, point simple. The list of topics and their scope is reasonably accurate. That alone is worth the price of the book, because you will know what to study and you will see that your enemy (be it circuits or finite automata or whatever) can only bite so hard. The books (and earlier editions) have helped my students and me take this exam successfully. I wish there were a better book, but so far there isn't.

The book basically contains a GRE computer science sample test and their correct answers. But that is about it: There are NO explanations to any of the answers!!! So DO NOT buy this book and hope to get any tips and hints or even review material guide for GRE CS subject test.

This book contains one and a half practice computer science GRE exams, with questions almost identical to the ones you'll see on the actual exam. There's no review or explanations for the answers, so you'll have to crack open your textbooks to help study. But once you've taken the practice exams, you'll know exactly what subjects to brush up on.

This book has numerous omissions. Do not rely entirely on this book, but supplement it with others that you can easily find by searching Google for CS GRE practice (including free practice materials from ETS).

By the way, For the general test, I found Powerprep Software: Test Preparation for the Gre General Test to be a worthwhile buy.

This book, although looks like a good preparation at a first glance, is an irrelevant study aid for the actual GRE Computer Science test.